A bit of legal news this evening: U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the United States late this evening, according to Reuters. Apple has fought worldwide for close to a year to get an injunction against a slew of Samsung products, claiming Samsung “slavishly” copies its products. The folks in Cupertino are most likely celebrating this evening, after working hard to protect the hot-selling iPad. When asked to give comment on the case, Judge Koh said Samsung is “competing unfairly” by “flooding the market with infringing products.”

“Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products. While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung’s infringing products outweighs Samsung’s harm in light of the previous findings by the Court.”

According toAllThingsD, the injunction will begin once Apple posts a $2.6 million bond to protect Samsung if the injunction is later determined to be wrongly issued. An Apple spokeswoman commented, “This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we’ve said many times before, we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

To be clear, this has been issued for the original Galaxy Tab—not the newer version Samsung just released.